In a collaborative effort between Navy Region Hawaii, Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Hawaii, and the Navy Exchange (NEX), a practical landscape design using environmentally-friendly vegetation and xeriscaping is being implemented at the Pearl Harbor NEX.

Many of the plants and shrubs requiring significant irrigation and maintenance have been removed and will be replaced with xeriscape functionality instead. Xeriscape is an innovative concept used to conserve water through the choice of hardy, drought-resistant plants and creative landscaping.

“Since water is such a valuable commodity, especially in Hawaii, it makes sense for Navy Region Hawaii to include xeriscape in current and future landscape designs,” said Matt Flach, landscape architect, Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Hawaii. “The principles of xeriscaping serve as guidelines to best-use irrigation, ultimately assisting water conservation efforts.”

On a recent evening, architect J. Meejin Yoon sat in her Leather District loft sewing mats of turf together. “I just have one more stitch,” she said.more stories like this

Several squares of grass, each about the size of an album cover, had arrived in a cooler a few days earlier. Yoon had dutifully sewn them together to create a large panel, part of a vertical garden installation called “Parti Wall, Hanging Green” to welcome the American Institute of Architects conference that begins in Boston today.

At a lecture Tuesday, Cranz, a professor of architecture at University of California Berkeley, was preaching to the choir when she shared her excitement about creating more parks.

Cranz is an expert in park design. But, ironically, she wrote the book on the chair – aptly called “The Chair.” It is a study of the history of the chair and the science behind the ergonomics of today’s high-end chairs, such as the Aeron. Her point: We sit too much and walk too little.

At Tuesday’s lecture, part of Portland Parks & Recreation’s “Great Parks, Great Cities” lecture series, Cranz gave a brief history of parks in the United States and attempted to give a glimpse into the future of parks.

“Defining the Sustainable Park,” as her speech was titled, turned out to be difficult. That’s because we’re only in the first inning of understanding what the new prototype for sustainable parks will look like, she said.

At last night’s 2008 AJ100 Awards dinner, Foster + Partners won three major practice awards and Norman Foster was honoured by his peers, who named him as their ‘most admired architect’.

Foster + Partners won awards for the ‘International Practice of the Year’, ‘Sustainability Initiative of the Year’ and the regional award for the South East and London. The practice was also placed as the third-largest overall. The AJ100 Awards recognise the achievements of the largest 100 architectural practices in the UK based on survey results; the ‘International Practice’ and ‘Sustainability Initiative of the Year’ awards are presented at the jury’s discretion.

The judges described Foster + Partners as ‘a clear and outright winner for breadth of coverage, for entering into new markets and for being a global brand.’